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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

I was bringing this up with a guy yesterday who was genuinely supporting the policies and somebody chimed in that they were not worried at all, because everyone wants to trade with the big boy in town. Trust is not important if they are afraid of you (I'm paraphrasing). Quite a different perspective, but it is consistent with an observation I made about a lot of US comments, people are quite happy for their country/government to engage in tactics (e.g. bullying, industrial espionage even against partners...) that they are enraged if others (E.g. China) do it. Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

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> "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others"

Doesn't work. We opened trade to China in the '70s. They took advantage of us, stealing IP, manipulating currency, paying their people terrible wages, crapping all over the environment. We let their companies freely in the US, they very severely restricted US business ventures in China.

Detroit, a former shining city in the industrial heartland, is now a bandit infested ruin.

In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children.

For me, coming from the Rust Belt, it's incredibly, painfully obvious that globalization's basically destroyed the US economy. I'm constantly amazed to meet well-meaning, intelligent people who don't seem to understand this fact.

For the people who want ^this guy to shut up but haven't engaged.. which part of the above is wrong? I can see hyperbole of "bandit infested ruin" pushing some buttons but otoh it's seems likely that crime is connected to general economic health.

For me the idea of "stealing IP" in a society like China seems to miss the entire point of what they're doing and seems to fall short of having respect for cultural differences. What we think of as "respecting intellectual property rights" can also be seen as "hoarding property" which is antithetical to communist ideals.

It’s right and wrong. Globalisation has hurt the rust belt, but it’s also allowed for much cheaper goods, which many people have enjoyed. It’s also made other economies much richer, which has allowed them to purchase U.S. goods (China being an immense iPhone market, for example). It’s not zero sum. If the world economy grows, and the USA holds onto a massive slice of that growing pie, then the USA wins - as it has been doing.

And the part about life just being totally unaffordable now isn’t really to do with China stealing from the US - housing is catastrophically expensive in many countries, and is more to do with how it has evolved as an asset class than trade relationships.

Doesn't that balance out in the end though? People in Detroit go from working at an automobile factory to working as a service worker at a local restaurant or retail store and their incomes go down massively, meaning all they can afford to buy is cheap crap from China sold at their local dollar store or discount retailer. They would rather have the old purchasing power and old retail options, especially since inflation has eroded a lot of those low prices.

> which part of the above is wrong?

Rust Belt isn't the entire US economy. Blaming where the US is today on globalization is probably 30 years too late.

The US economy has created enormous wealth. Domestic policies on how to spread around the prosperity to all citizens is where the US failed. Think more of what Sanders and AOC talk about, not bringing back factories that will be 99% automated anyway. For one example, how can the most prosperous country in the world have a majority of its bankruptcies tied to medical debt? And somehow people want to blame China or globalization or some other boogie man?

I think csense is engaging in good faith discussion. The proper response is an explanation, not downvotes.

The Rust Belt's just one part of the story, not the whole US economy. Globalization actually created tons of wealth for the USA, but that money hasn't been spread around fairly. It's all piled up in coastal cities and with rich folks while factory towns got left behind. Cutting off global trade wouldn't fix anything - it would tank the overall economy while only helping a few powerful players pulling the strings. The real problem isn't trade deals; it's that the USA never properly invested the profits back into the communities that got hit hardest.

> In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children.

That was never sustainable in the long run and no one can bring that back.

Why was it not sustainable? Clearly the houses were there, and the non-working spouses, and the car and the children...

It was the US benefiting from its position on the world stage as to why that was possible. The US was never and is not going to retain it's position on the world stage, and indeed under Trump it is radically declining.

The US is going to normalize with other western nations as we enter a multi-polar world.

The problem is Republicans don't accept that and think they can return to the 1950s.

Well, we can't count on the entire rest of the world having all their factories bombed and being the only nation with reasonable manufacturing capability all the time.

The US was not an export-focused economy in the 50s and 60s. In fact trade as a percent of GDP bottomed out in those decades. Arguing that the prosperity for the average person was only "sustainable" in an environment where there wasn't foreign competition is an argument for tariffs.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/march/evoluti...

In what way would the citizens of the US have been worse off had the rest of the world had reasonable manufacturing capability? I'd have thought that either it'd be the same, or better, because same production + trade.

Since your comment is comparing the US with China, maybe a bit of "whataboutism" is warranted here.

> stealing IP

Edward Snowden's leaks reveal that the US engages in wide-scale economic espionage. Additionally, the US also uses extra-territorial means of coercion to acquire cutting-edge technology -- see e.g. the Alstom case.

> manipulating currency

For many decades the US has been able to print money like a madman while the rest of the world absorbs the costs by virtue of the USD being the primary reserve currency globally. The US is also not above strong-arming its allies into appreciating their own currencies to boost American exports -- see the Plaza Accord, which partly contributed to Japan's subsequent Lost Decades.

> paying their people terrible wages

China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty in the last 20 years. In the US wages have remained stagnant for the working class over the same period, if not longer. Frustration among the working class -- which is entirely justified and understandable, by the way -- is probably one of the reasons why Trump was re-elected.

> crapping all over the environment

Chinese cities today are mostly clean and quiet, increasingly powered by renewable energy with more and more electric vehicles driven on the roads. The Chinese are also undertaking massive greening projects, such as the Great Green Wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) On a per-capita basis the Chinese emit far less carbon dioxide than Americans do.

The US, especially when compared to almost any other developed country, is in no moral position to be sanctimonious about environmental issues.

Don't blame other countries -- China or not -- for America's own catastrophic, chronic failure in leadership and subpar policymaking, especially when America has enjoyed so many entrenched advantages for so many decades (and still does).

The US economy is the largest in the world, disposable income, both average and median, are highest and second highest respectively. Median income is 30-40% higher than comparable developed economies, and significant higher than China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...

Even industrial output the US is second highest, and it's closer to first place than second.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sec...

And supporting a whole family on a single income well was a very narrow window of time, and it required the US to have no real economic competitors. Where US workers had no competition on the world stage, but their output was sold on the world stage. So even if the US go isolationist that's still never coming back.

> And supporting a whole family on a single income well was a very narrow window of time, and it required the US to have no real economic competitors.

But then how were other countries able to have this while having economic competitors?

A lot of this is just social change from the womens liberation movement. Women went to work and the market adapted. Now, in the main, you need 2 incomes to run a home.

It's worse in a lot of countries where tax policy disadvantages the pre-1960 norm like the UK.

Some places relied on other ways to make money (here in Australia it was comodoties). A lot is just social change to two income households, and it's main contributor to living costs was housings. Two people bringing in money ,means that households can pay more for a mortgage or rent, driving up costs.

That's what drove up housing costs after we switched from single to double income households. But before that, but before that, people in lots of countries could afford a house and a family on a single income, despite competition from other countries.

It's not that this situation was unsustainable or only attainable for the US; this situation should have been the norm, with the additional income just providing extra luxury or time off, but instead we got screwed through artificial scarcity and more money going to the very rich instead of the working and middle class.

I agree that the Rust Belt has had it rough, but it is not the entire US economy. I won't argue that people saw the future in the 70s, but those jobs were/are going away to automation regardless (and they are certainly not coming back). It's better to not be reliant on them now. In hindsight globalization was right move. And even if it wasn't, trying to blame the current US issues on globalization is 30 years too late.

Statistically the US manufactures more than it ever has on a $ amount, and is the #2 manufacturer in the world. Until recently, the US economy was the envy of the world. The trade situation the US setup did and does work, and along with other policies, led to enormous prosperity that was just unevenly distributed.

Where the US failed, and mostly around GOP and now Trump policies, is not spreading the growing prosperity to more of its citizens. Given this enormous prosperity where is universal healthcare, free/low cost college, UBI, etc...?

Unfortunately, the people who really need these policies have mostly voted against them for decades. Their anger is legitimate, but it's misplaced. Being angry at "globalization" or "illegals" or pick a group is a misdirection fed by years of AM radio and Fox News. Now we are seeing the cycle continue, but this time the US economy may really be destroyed.

>In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children

A lot of the change there is not down to China but limiting the ability to build a cheap house through nimbyism and regulation and then competition from other dual income / high earners bidding everything up. You could fix it by allocating everyone a bit of land and letting them build whatever on it even if it was just a shack. It's not really trade that's the main problem.

What? No; the problem is vastly more attributable to the tremendous transfer of wealth from the working classes to the wealthy that has occurred over the past 50 years.

Look at any graph of earnings by quintile over time, or of income or wealth inequality today, and you'll see that the fact that builders can't cut corners and sell us crappy houses and apartments that will fall down around our ears is far from the primary reason we have trouble affording things today.

Wealth is not zero sum though. LeBron James being great at basketball doesn't make you any worse at basketball. Jeff Bezos starting a company in his garage selling books online that became one of the biggest in the world worth many billions doesn't make me any poorer. Financial transactions are win-win. That is why there is a mutual thank you when making a purchase. The cafe owner would rather have my 2$ instead of coffee in their pot. I would rather have coffee in my cup instead of 2$. If neither of us thought we would not be better off the transaction would not happen

> Trust is not important if they are afraid of you .. Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

I've noticed this also, having spent a lot of time in both places. Some would say this is part of the American national character, and it's the darker side of hard-nosed individualistic cowboys, etc. The famous opening speech of Patton comes to mind here:

> When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.

There's at least some truth to this and the mean-spirited arrogance/strength in the rest of the speech being in line with national character, I think it has to be admitted. This seems like the guy was certainly never cut out to be a diplomat or act with moderation, and maybe most Americans aren't. That said though.. maybe a deeper issue is that suffering (economic or otherwise) changes people. Makes them merely hypocrtical in the best case, aggravated and mean on average, or in the worst case positively cruel. A lot of America has not been ok for a long time now.

Americans are taught at a very young age about Manifest Destiny, the notion when starting in the East that America has a right all the way to the West. While events like Trail of Tears are mentioned, they're downplayed during early school years and not brought up again later when kids may be able to form an opinion. Essentially, winning is ingrained into the American mindset and is the driving force behind almost everything - this helps when making companies big and even bigger, but also mutual growth hard to fathom. Current US policy does feel very American. Seems like a make-or-break moment for the American model itself, and if it breaks there'll need to be a change starting from the early age education/propaganda.

Which is why China doesn’t need to do anything but reliably trade right now and take the US market share.

When people say that China will replace the US as the world's largest buyer of exports, I always wonder what planet they're living on.

China does not WANT to do this. They have tons of protectionism. They give tons of preference to their own firms and protect their domestic market from foreign companies. This enables their firms to grow strong. This is a strategy which has been practiced by many many developing nations. They can't live without it and don't want to.

Why does gmerc think that China is going to rewrite its entire economic policy in order to take "market share?" We usually use that term to mean, you are selling stuff and want to sell to more customers because you make more money. In this context however we are talking about BUYING more stuff - why would it be sane for China to dominate the act of buying everything it can on the planet? (At the inevitable erosion of its manufacturing base - just like what happened to the USA when it opened up its markets.)

I mean you can think whatever you want about Trump and his actions, but it just makes zero sense to think that China will step in and fill the old role of the US here, when doing so is a polar opposite from their current trade strategy and would probably collapse their economy. And that gets to the real elephant in the room, which is that no one wants to do America's "old job" anymore. No one else wants to be the ubiquitous buyer of everything with big trade deficits all over the place, the vast majority of countries on earth defend their domestic markets and preference their local firms more than pre-Trump America did - exactly what are these new alliances that are going to arise, when everyone wants to sell to other countries, and no one wants to buy?

I happen to live in a country whose #1 export market was the USA and is being slapped with some of the largest tariffs. Time will tell of course but at the moment they pretty much just seem to be fucked and all they are saying is they are ready to come to the table and negotiate with the US as soon as possible. There just doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for their exports elsewhere - it's not like every country on earth isn't out there pimping its exports to anyone who will listen, pretty much all the time. If China or the EU had a burning need for a couple hundred billion dollars more of shellfish or textiles or what have you, they'd already be buying it.

>Trust is not important if they are afraid of you

I understand that argument I've never seen it spelled out by anyone other than me. I only brought it up as a last effort to explain the possible thinking behind these actions. It still won't make sense because even if you believe that you are the top dog and you can effortlessly bully others then you'd have to realize that you won't be the top dog in every situation all the time everywhere at the same time. There will be many instances where others who previously leaned your way for free will now look to get paid for leaning your way.

cycomanic says>"Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument"<

While they may "talk the talk", Europe doesn't "Walk the walk"! Europe has strong tariffs on imports. The USA is now simply equalizing the situation. Here's an example:

Automobile Tariffs by Country 2025: put your cursor on a country to see its automobile tariff. European tariffs on autos are roughly four times those of the USA. While you're there you can look up the "sales tax" too!

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/automobil...

European companies have had tariffs on USA products for decades. Those tariffs protect and maintain industries within a country. The USA failed to maintain that protection: the USA lost jobs and harmed industry which guts an economy. Meanwhile, for example, Germany protected it's auto industry with tariffs on cars from abroad.

My feeling is that "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

There's no doubt that the "Law of Comparative Advantage"(LCA) in economics is a valid argument for trade. However, the LCA is almost always argued in the absence of externalities: costs generated by use of the LCA are usually not taken into account when examining a full economy: job losses, industry shrinkage and failure, etc.

That's a bad example. The US already had higher tariffs on vehicles if you include the chicken tax.

Thanks for this bit of history that I was unaware of. Note that the chicken tax applies to light trucks however.

Yeah, that's an idiotic take...

The US has benefited massively from soaking up the best brains globally. That's not going to keep happening; I have plenty of colleagues already who are refusing to travel to the US. We may well even swing into brain drain as Trump et al move closer to executing their cultural revolution.

Meanwhile, all those other countries will start trading more with each other. The US stands to be left out. Won't happen overnight, but Trump is pissing away the advantages. When the dollar isn't the global currency anymore things will really start to hurt.

It's an idiotic take I agree. However, I don't think the US has benefited massively from soaking the best brains globally because of its foreign or trade policies. Most dominant voices about US foreign policy and foreign business interest has always been characterized by aggression and exploitation.

I highly doubt people were ok with that because the US had low tariffs on their countries exports to the US.

I heard people saying BLM and Covid were cultural revolutions that would lead to brain drain under Joe Biden. It was hype. Politicians who marched with BLM in the summer of 2020 by 2023 were saying they were never in favor of defunding the police

Devil’s advocate:

If you (the US) massively subsidize the world order through your financial markets, military defense, and foreign aid, it’s only fair that you get to take advantage of your position.

Historically, the US has done this at the expense of its working class. Now there is a populist feeling that we are owed a long due “payback” for our generosity.

The Bernie/AOC left believe the payback is owed by our elites, who enriched themselves by austerity and hollowing out our industrial base.

The Trump/MAGA right believe the payback is owed by other countries — freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US.

To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit.

Edit: To any downvoters, please comment with where you think I’m wrong. I’m not defending any policy, just providing what I believe is an accurate representation of the populist American mindset described in the parent comment.

The US has always been incredibly mercenary with their investment. If there was a way of squeezing more blood from the stone a previous president would have done it. You learned about economic policy yesterday. Now you think that picking tariffs by throwing darts can do better than seasoned economic expert trying to maximize benefit to the US. It's just laughable.

Did I ever defend a particular industrial policy? No. You misread my comment.

My comment was intended to give the GP poster insight into the mindset of Americans who revel in the “bullying” behavior they described.

But one point of inquiry — how are foreign aid programs like USAID mercenary? Even if they are CIA fronts, it’s hard to argue that they are in any way economically extractive.

Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? It wouldn't surprise me, Trump had Laura Loomer at the White House and 1/2 an hour later three members of the National Secure Council had been fired.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/0...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-fir...

A central problem with this administration is it's headed by a psychopath, who has a long track record of being an untrustworthy liar. Could he pick an economics team that can actually make hard choices that are generally better for America? It's possible. But it's also possible these are just more kooks, or corrupt people looking to grift, or people who think like Peter Thiel, that democracy is over and needs to be replaced by a monarch.

My take? Impeach and remove Trump from office. Do it now. If the country wants these kinds of policies, they need to do it through the Congress. Not through a president, sane or insane.

> Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook?

https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump...

> Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration.

> Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”

We don't actually know if Trump's tariff strategy is Stephen Miran's strategy, nor do we know what Stephen Miran thinks of the strategy.

What we do know is that Trump disproportionately attacks people who criticize him, withholds security protection from them, and sometimes even sends mobs to have them assassinated.

It also took some time before Mark Esper told the public that Trump ordered that protesters be shot.

Therefore, I think it's possible we won't get Stephen Miran's honest assessment in the near future. We'll just have to wait and see.

Miran is CEA chair, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Economic_Advisers

> The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical research for the White House and prepares the publicly-available annual Economic Report of the President.

> To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit.

Assuming this generous interpretation is accurate, then it's a problem of ignorance of the people holding this view. Characterizing other countries as 'freeloaders' is exactly that - ignorance.

Also, what about all the coups, military operations, political pressure etc etc? Was that the gentle giant?

America is the richest country in the world. That is the payback. Yet somehow the working class is screwed.

People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists". It's an emotional response. I'm scared how far they take it.

Right, and I think that’s largely true.

Whether or not the “right wing working class” are right in their root cause analysis, the domestic situation in the US is catastrophic enough to demand explanation:

  “If we are the richest country on earth, why can’t I afford a house and healthcare?”

Answer 1: You are being taken advantage of by wealthy elites within your country!

Answer 2: The whole world has made Americans front the bill for a regime of global peace, security, and a trusted reserve currency, at the cost of you, the American worker!

Depending on which answer you choose, and which camp you ally with, your worldview will differ.

I know. There is no reason to believe in #2. Its an emotional response. And so you cant change it. Just like you cant use logic with a flat earther. And that's scary for the rest of the world. I just hope no wars happen.

There is if you believe the “globalists” are the same people from #1. It doesn’t help that there is some appreciable degree of overlap.

Dona nobis pacem!

Housing and healthcare are the two things that have little to do with trade. Housing affordability is almost entirely policy driven. In a "free" market (quoted because the definition typically doesn't take into account the necessity of a functional society to maintain property rights and values, just ask Detroit), housing affordability is entirely dependent on one's relative income and propensity to spend, i.e. you can have high absolute income (say in NYC) and still find you desired housing unaffordable. I think people intuitively understand this. Healthcare costs are more complicated but is also almost entirely a domestic issue.

"People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists"."

If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'. There's nothing emotional about a methodology that has failed over and over again.

Politicians should just come out and say this to the people. Oh you can't afford a house? Oh you cant afford healthcare? But we are the richest country in the world. And the system is fair. It means you didn't earn it. Duh.

Or, alternatively, it's called "taxes" and "wealth redistribution".

High inequalities is proven to be bad for development, so clearly there is a point where people have too much and it's harmful to society.

Ergo it would be immoral to allow some to hoard wealth infinitely, just because they can.

That is begging the question. The question is not "Why are some people poor" that is the default state of humanity, and has been for the past 100,000 years Homo Sapiens have existed. The question is what are the succesful doing right. It is not because of "hoarding wealth infinitely" that a doctor has more money saved up than someone addicted to drugs and living on the street. It is their decisions that lead to their current circumstances. The doctor spending a decade in medical school and residency has delayed a lot of gratification getting their, while the drug addict likely had some issues with impulse control or delayed gratification.

Well, we’ve been going through wealth redistribution towards the “elites”, and no one batted an eye.

China popped the real estate bubble, collapsing entire industry giants and making the “elites” swallow the financial downturn. Literally allowing the “poor” to refinance their homes on the back of the “rich”, because they believe housing isn’t for speculation, but for living in.

Tariffs without windfall profits tax will be further wealth redistribution, from the poor to the wealthy

Communism is control of the economy via government owning the businesses. What you are describing is taxes in a free market system. They are not the same thing, and being convinced they are is the majority of the problem.

haha

>If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'

No, it's taxation. A pretty common phenomenon.

Indeed. Taxation is as old as civilization. Civilization is built on taxation. The first writing systems, the first numbers, the first money, it was all invented to enable taxation. People should finally quit being so childish about this. Unless you want to go back to the stone age, taxation is unavoidable.

Most of those people didn't earn it directly, but via exploiting people working under them and not paying them a fair share for their work.

> If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'.

Like taking money generated by the labourer and giving it to the company owners to share with their idle families? And threatening unemployment and precariousness/homelessness for those who disagree? This seems to have failed again indeed

> If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'.

No, that's capitalist. That's literally the core of capitalism.

> freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US.

I'm not trying to jump on you for having captured it, but the problem is that this is wholly nonsensical - the repayment for benefiting from our technology and military defense IS the net exporting to the US (via holding our currency). That "logic" is still based on having one foot in the paradigm of the financial engineering puppetmasters where getting real physical goods is somehow a liability rather than a benefit!

For sure, this enviable position has had a corrosive effect on our economy. But the inability to deal with that has been wholly down to self-inflicted policy wounds of previous decades - chiefly led by the Republican party marketing a game of fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the government is prevented from taking deliberate action to mitigate the displacement of industry and workers, while the increased (but now centralized) wealth from offshoring (and other technological/economic gains) was merely handed over to the banksters in the form of low-interest loans that went into driving up the asset bubble.

Best comment in the whole thread. And thank you. This is a useful and clear analysis.

It's clearly the Bernie/AOC left who are correct here. The US forced this world order on the rest of the world, and massively benefitted from it, so the payback is not owed by the rest of the world who had this forced on them (though they benefitted too) but by the wealthy elite, who benefitted by far the most from it.

Look at the number of multibillionaires the US has acquired over the past 40 years. The trillion dollar megacorps. The many millionaires in Congress. Those are the people who owe payback to the American public. But those are also the people who control the American public, control their news, and feed them misinformation.

> Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

I mean, in the specific realm of trade wars, that’s probably more correct, because the game theory of the thing tends to make retaliating against the aggressor nigh-inevitable, particularly in a “country v world” situation.

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